Alan Caruba's blog is a daily look at events, personalities, and issues from an independent point of view. Copyright, Alan Caruba, 2015. With attribution, posts may be shared. A permission request is welcome. Email acaruba@aol.com.

Monday, December 8, 2014

Protesting Law and Order

By Alan
Caruba

I doubt
there was ever a time in America, pre-Revolution and since, that race was not
an issue. It was for the framers of the Constitution who, in order to get the
southern colonies to accept it, included in Article Two that, for the purpose
of taxation, slaves were to be identified as only “three-fifths” of being a
person. In Section 9, it was agreed that the issue of slavery was not to be
addressed until 1808, but “a tax or duty may be imposed on such importation,
not exceeding ten dollars for each person.”

Protesting
something, anything, is as American as the flag. After fighting a Revolution
for six years to rid themselves of a British monarch and his control of the
colonies, Americans embraced the right to protest as part of their definition
of liberty and freedom. By 1861 the protests against slavery had so divided the
nation a Civil War had to be fought. In 1870, the 15th Amendment
enfranchised former slaves with the right to vote, but Congress would wait
until 1920 to extend the same right to women!

Having
lived through the Civil Rights movement in the 1960s, the assassinations of
President Kennedy, his brother Robert who was the Attorney General, and Dr.
Martin Luther King, Jr. I concluded that the Civil Rights Act of
1964 had “solved” the issues that had afflicted blacks in America. I was wrong.

The
protests that occurred in the wake of grand jury decisions not to indict a police
officer who shot Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, or another group of
police officers whose arrest of Eric Garner led to his death in Staten Island,
New York are different only because they swiftly went from local to national.
The initial Ferguson protests immediately descended into looting and arson. The
Garner protests attracted large crowds that disrupted traffic and interfered
with consumers in some shopping outlets. It seems to have gone unnoticed that
large numbers of those in the latter protests were white.

The
protests were magnified by the involvement of the President and the Attorney
General who, while urging that violence be avoided, told the protesters to
“stay the course.” Had either Michael Brown or Eric Garner obeyed the law, they
would be alive. Brown had committed a robbery just prior to his attack on
Officer Darren Wilson and Garner had a long history of arrests and was engaged in a minor offense of selling cigarettes.

With the
exception of those who joined the protests, white America is deeply at odds
with black America. There are serious differences that include issues involving
crime rates, school dropout rates, numbers of illegitimate or aborted children, single parent families,
and other comparable social differences between the two racial groups.

As the
protests continued, Rasmussen Reports noted that “Many had high hopes that the
election of the nation’s first black President would help heal our racial
wounds, but just eight percent (8%) think race relations in America are better
since Barack Obama become President in 2009. That’s something that blacks,
whites, and other minority Americans agree on.” Put another way, ninety-two
(92%) agree there has been no improvement in race relations.

The
division between the way white and black Americans view the nation is quite
dramatic. Rasmussen found that “while 54% of whites think the U.S. justice
system is fair to blacks, 84% of black voters consider the justice system
unfair to them.” The protests are no doubt rooted in the finding that
“eighty-two percent (82%) of black voters think most black Americans receive
unfair treatment from the police. White voters by a 56% to 30% margin don’t
believe that’s true.”

Need it be
said that Rasmussen found that “Black voters also continue to overwhelmingly
approve of the job Obama is doing as President, while most whites
disapprove.”The irony of this is
reflected in the numbers of blacks who are school dropouts, unemployed or in
our nation’s prisons. Obama’s six years in office have not demonstrated much
improvement in the lives of many black Americans.

The
results of the midterm elections are testimony that voters want “change” that
is very different from Obama’s promised “transformation” of America. They have
run out of the “hope” he promised when elected.

Rasmussen
reports that “Nearly half of voters want Congress to stop the President’s new
plan to protect up to five million illegal immigrants from deportation.
Americans rate their citizenship highly and aren’t keen on putting many of
those here illegally on the path to citizenship” and “many voters expect the
new Republican Congress to repeal Obamacare.”

I don’t
expect race relations in America to improve much so long as black Americans who
comprise 13% of the population continue to demand something different from
“equal justice” when decisions are rendered with which they disagree. Marching
for “justice” ignores the fact that we have a very good justice and law
enforcement system in America.

I worry
that too many Americans fail to respect the police who put their lives on the
line to protect them. They are not the enemy. The criminals are.

Being
black or a member of any minority comes with the option to regard oneself as a
victim, but those who stay in school, get a job, work hard, get married, and
raise a family are not victims. They are proof that the American dream is real
and can be achieved.

3 comments:

Alan, As long as we have millions of able bodied unemployed people living off our dime via government subsidies and welfare, we will never solve the racial divide. I respect anyone who works to make a living and support their family and resent having my taxes support those too lazy to work.Obama and Holder have done nothing to change the system of government dependency, in fact they have encouraged it!Change the welfare state so that no able bodied person can opt to not work and live off welfare. Put a time limit on benefits, say 6 months. After that if you don't work, you don't eat!

About Me

I am and have been for a long time a writer by profession. I have several books to my credit and my daily column, "Warning Signs", is disseminated on many Internet news and opinion websites, as well as blogs. In addition, I am a longtime book reviewer and have a blog offering a monthly report on new fiction and non-fiction.